THE BEARDED LADIES

Through theater, opera, humor, and a whole lot of glitter, The Bearded Ladies Cabaret “questions social messages seen in popular culture and tackles the politics of gender, identity, and artistic invention.” Atticus Jay’s interest in The Beards as a performance troupe stems from their personal understanding of queer performance in everyday life. For the ten weeks leading up to The Beards annual Bastille Day Cabaret performance in the Spring of 2018, Atticus followed The Beards; sitting in on their practices, dress-rehearsals, and final performance at Eastern State Penitentiary. Atticus started by documenting interactions behind the scenes at group rehearsals; this was in an attempt to reveal the performers off-stage performances of themselves. Atticus began to realise through this process however, just how difficult a task they had set themselves up for. To create the intimate portraits seen below, Atticus was invited into the homes of The Beards, where they photographed using a medium-format Hasselblad in order to slow down and get more connected with their subjects.

All the photographs on this page are made with a medium-format Hasselblad with 120mm Kodak Tri-X film.